The Secret Language Of Strangers
by HalfshellVenus1
Summary: Dean/OFC, light het: Someone notices Dean from afar, and in time he notices her. Atmospheric PWP.


Title: **The Secret Language Of Strangers**  
Author: HalfshellVenus  
Pairing: Dean/OFC (**Het**)  
Rating: T  
Summary: Atmospheric PWP. Someone notices Dean from afar, and in time he notices her.

Author's Notes: A new style, and a different type of story for me. I'm expanding my horizons by doing Het and OFC all in one (sounds like a threat, doesn't it). Written for 60minutefics for the prompt of "What's In A Name." I chose Mireille, with a French-Provencal origin assumed to mean "to admire." The reason behind why I looked for that name would entirely ruin the mood of this story.

x-x-x-x-x

She'd seen him from across the restaurant, long about noon. He was there with another man—someone tall and worried-looking, altogether far too serious about something.

They were strangers, of course. Everybody knew everyone in this town, knew their parents and where they lived. Half the time people knew your middle name, even if it seemed you'd never told anyone.

Strangers attracted notice. And this one in particular would have stood out anywhere he happened to be.

It wasn't his smile—he looked better when he _didn't_ smile, and she'd never met anyone like that before. His face was, well… perfect, is what it was. Sort of unreal, like a movie star. Not the kind of person who came rolling through their town, not at all.

She couldn't have been more surprised when the two of them showed up on her doorstep, asking questions.

Mrs. Bisbe, they said. The woman next door who'd died in her bathtub two weeks back. Did she have any relatives, any enemies? Had there been anyone strange hanging around?

She couldn't help smiling, wondering where they were from. Anyone who didn't belong she'd have noticed, and then there was familiar-strange, like the Tibbets' oldest boy, Blake. She didn't suppose he counted, though, because he'd lived here always, and he was more of a peeper than anything.

And enemies, well honestly. Little old biddy-spats over church socials and book clubs hardly counted as enemies. Sometimes a person just got old…

"If you think of anything else, you let us know." He'd given her a card marked Dean Weston, _Private Detective_.

"I surely will," she said softly, though it wouldn't have given her the excuse to phone him up for the reasons she wanted too.

The other man—Sam Oxford, he'd said he was—just seemed oddly uncomfortable. His eyes kept flicking over to Dean, like he was about to say something wrong. Seemed like they were guilty of something, those two.

She locked her doors when they left.

It was only hours later, when her block of medical transcripts was typed up and ready for delivery, that he came back again alone.

She opened the door, though she'd been taught to know better.

"What's your name?" was the first thing he asked her. His voice was much deeper than she'd thought when he was standing on her porch earlier.

"Mireille," she said. There was a story behind it, but she was tired of wading through that nonsense when it really only amounted to her mother liking all things French. Twenty-six years later, that name was still fanciful instead of inspired.

"Mir-elle," he pressed onward, "Do you like me?"

And of course, she answered "Yes."

This was not the sort of thing she ever did—she was cautious in her way. Perhaps it was because he was quiet with her instead of false and flirtatious, the way she'd expected from someone who looked like _that_.

Perhaps it was her own quiet way that made him so.

His hand touched her arm, and reason was lost.

His face was so still, so softly serious. He was careful when he kissed her, letting her decide whether she wanted more. That he never pushed, that he brushed her skin with fingers that marveled along the way—holding her neck so gently as he tipped his head against her and caressed her mouth before covering it with his own—the choice was made by a part of herself she rarely listened to.

Her instincts told her she could afford, for once, to let go.

In her own bedroom, upstairs where the light fell like snowflakes through the white lace curtains, he pulled her close. He looked into her eyes, like he was seeing all the way down inside her and letting her see him in return. She sensed that something was there—a hint of mystery, but nothing that belonged to now.

They had the shyness not of strangers, but of something within themselves. They made love with a slow kind of tenderness that made sure that neither of them would break.

Afterwards, they lay together in the dappled sun-and-shadows drifting through the windows as early evening came on. She stroked his face as they smiled softly at each other.

He was gone within the hour, but she could still feel his touch electrifying her body like the air in a lightning-filled sky.

She didn't expect to see him again—she had never let herself be that naïve, no matter how she was raised.

Later that night, she heard a noise that didn't belong in the insect-driven symphony of the outdoors. She crept to the window to take a look, searching the ground, the trees and the air.

It came entirely as a surprise that his face was thirty feet away, behind the glass of Mrs. Bisbe's upstairs window inside that locked-up house.

When he turned her way and saw her, he at least had the grace to look embarrassed.

_-------- fin --------_


End file.
